"Fides Quaerens Intellectum" – St. Anselm
Once that which was special ceases to be special, what’s left to focus on but the discordant and ugly? Those are the things our consciousness starts to focus on when the harmonious and beautiful has faded into the background. Continue Reading →
I’m certain that something happened on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. All four gospels record the event. Some scholars suggest that, when the bread and fish were distributed, people who had brought food with them took it out and began sharing it with others. In that case, it was a miracle of compassion and generosity. But, it doesn’t matter. Continue Reading →
If you’ve spent any time around the ocean, you’ll know that anything that hangs around in the water for very long sooner or later gets encrusted with barnacles: little sea creatures that build themselves tiny shell castles out of calcite. It’s not only the sea that does this: just about everything that hangs around long enough gathers accretions. Even people can become “moldy oldies.” Continue Reading →
Although today’s gospel is very familiar to us, like much of Saint John/s gospel, its meaning can be quite complex. First, to make sense of it all, we need to be clear about the situation in which we find ourselves. The temple in Jerusalem – Herod’s temple – had been under construction for over a generation: 46 years to be exact. It would take another twenty years to complete it. It was built along the general lines of a Canaanite temple: a series of courtyards, each one inside another. The first and largest courtyard was the Court of the Gentiles, Continue Reading →
In the Lenten Series on this past Wednesday evening, I talked a little bit about the Satan – the prosecuting attorney in Hebrew. Like Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, this being is an attribute of God who has been given an individuality and a personality. All of these beings are charged with bringing to life these divine attributes in our physical world. Our scriptures tell us that no one can “see” God and live. That “seeing” is not with our bodily eyes, but with our minds. We cannot understand God in the fullness of his being. At most, we can experience Continue Reading →